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    anna

    love these ideas! we go to the zoo every year on christmas day!

    Melissa Lawrence

    That sounds so fun and such a great tradition — you also always need little plans and trips even on holidays, at least I do! A whole day at home with all of them is too long, even Christmas!

    Jennie

    Wow, I LOVE all your ideas! And, thank you for posting them in time for me to use this year! One side of my family is Swedish too and we love our Spinning Angel Chimes Candle Holder and look forward to lighting another candle each week.

    Melissa Lawrence

    I need one of those candle holders — do you celebrate Santa Lucia Day? We do! I am going to start a bit of baking next week, this is my favorite month of the year!

    Anitha Kuppuswamy

    “Every year Santa left one big unwrapped gift under the tree along with wrapped gifts. The big unwrapped gift could be anything from a teddy (when I was a kid) to a vacuum once I was in college.”

    Melissa Lawrence

    Vacuums become really good gifts once you get a bit older!!

    natali

    The advent calendar is without a doubt my favorite tradition. I’ve been sewing one for months now and I’m almost finished, can’t wait to take it out and use it every year with my boys :). Another fun tradition is making gingerbread men, just love chrismas cookies!

    Melissa Lawrence

    I love Christmas cookies too — what kind of advent calendar do you have?

    Katy

    I love that muffin tin advent calendar idea, but I think we’ll do the cotton ball Santa beard one because it’s easier for now! As for our favorite traditions, we like to go to the city tree lighting, and the night time light parade. Each year I trace my daughter’s hand print onto our tree skirt. Eventually it’s going to look so great! For breakfast on Christmas morning we always have Cinnabons. Yum!

    Melissa Lawrence

    I love Cinnabons, yummy! I love that hand tracing tradition — did you see the Thanksgiving decorations we did with hand tracing and foot tracing where you make a turkey? Thanks for commenting!

    Chris

    This is the first year for us aa family, time to start a new tradition. Think we are going to start it of right by showing giving is more fun than receiving!

    lace

    My favorite tradition is sharing a large breakfast on Christmas morning and then giving gifts afterwards.

    ToCo

    Stockings! Those were always fantastic when my sister and I were growing up and I made sure to do the same. My sis and I were allowed to get uop anytime as long as we didn’t wake the folks, and that time together was special! 😀

    Melissa Lawrence

    My mother made our stockings too – I will post a picture of them, I have some really nice ones that I ordered online for the kids with their names on them, they pretty much do the trick!

    Janice

    We always go to Opryland Hotel in Nashville to see the Christmas lights. My grandson looks forward to this every year. We always go on Christmas Eve driving around listening to Christmas music on the radio. I love the season too, because I love to bake! I love making Christmas cookies, chex mix and finding good recipes to try

    Melissa Lawrence

    I’ve never been there but I’ve heard so much about it and am dying to go… I love baking too and how cozy it makes the house!

    Kathy

    When I was growing up, we were allowed to open 1 present on Christmas Eve ( it just couldn’t be the biggest present) Me and my cousins would look at the presents and study them and try to figure out what our granny had got us.
    Now, I continue this tradition with my son and daughter. We also make the Christmas chain and last year we wrote down a Christmas themed thing today so each day we had a new activity! We really liked do this! ( we never got any snow to play in but we pretended w/ Kroger plastic bags and threw them at each other for our snowball fight)

    caligali

    How Cute is the Muffin Tin Advent Calendar? And I’m definitely going to incorporate the Good Deeds Advent Jar this year! Thanks a Million!!

    Christine

    We’ve done some different things from making the Jesse Tree to short Advent readings from the Bible. I’m looking forward to adding some crafts that will help the children anticipate Christ’s birth.

    Thanks for your ideas!

    OrganicCents

    Our biggest tradition is simply putting up our Xmas tree. Each year we invite family over make hot cocoa and apple cider. We have ornaments going back 2 generations. when we unpack them someone shares the ornaments history and a memory. The best is to see my daughter participate. I die to hear her Christmas memories – incredibly precious!

    sharon

    Well we are Jewish so our traditions are different for Chanukah…..we cant go a year without homemade potato latkes…..so much better then you can find in any restaurant. I tried one year doing a healthier version using zuccini and sweet potato and baking them….huge fail. Indulge on the real kind of potatoes and frying for holidays. The only time I will fry at home is for traditional holiday food.

    Melissa Lawrence

    Congrats sharon, you’re the winner of this giveaway! We’ll be in touch about your prize. I think you’re so right — there are some dishes that just don’t work when you try to do a healthy version. I say for a special treat during the holidays it’s ok to indulge!

    Sharon

    Thank you for all your ideas!

    As a kid growing up, we had the usual traditions of looking at lights, baking and drawing names for each other but we also went to the Christmas Eve service at our church. It was a candlelight service and we would sing Christmas songs. I would always look forward to going

    Melissa Lawrence

    Sharon, we did the same thing! Midnight candlelit mass (I grew up Catholic) — honestly, it was the only mass of the year I really loved!

    Brad

    My parents divorced when I was young so one thing I loved about the holidays was getting together with my family. Both my parents remarried and I had a brother with my mom and 2 sisters and 2 brothers through my dad and my step mom. We would all go to my grandmother’s house ( I called her mema) and there would be at least 50 people under one roof. It was great, getting to see all the family that I didn’t get to see every day. I think having an extended family is great

    Melissa Lawrence

    Brad, I loved reading your comment and wish you a wonderful holiday season with your family!

    Melissa Lawrence

    Thank you all for your thoughtful comments — I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season. We’ve chosen our winner for this giveaway but we have more running on the site so check them out! Happy holidays!